A Liberal Theory of Practical Morality

A Liberal Theory of Practical Morality PDF Author: Earl Spurgin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786612259
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Moral issues and questions abound in daily life. Media outlets frequently raise awareness of many, such as those concerning individuals’ right to privacy. The same venues seldom, if ever, raise awareness of others, such as moral issues and questions concerning our fantasies. Regardless of the level of publicity various venues afford particular moral matters, most people who become aware of those matters find many interesting and important. A problem most encounter, however, is determining the criteria through which they should approach the moral matters they wish to engage. Ethicists have long sought a moral theory that would provide the desired criteria, but most will grant readily that those efforts have not produced a generally-accepted theory. This book presents the author’s case that a kind of moral liberalism is the theory we should use to engage daily life’s moral matters. The author presents a conception of moral liberalism, argues that it is the best approach to practical morality in a plural society, and applies it to several of morality’s practical matters.

A Liberal Theory of Practical Morality

A Liberal Theory of Practical Morality PDF Author: Earl Spurgin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786612259
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book Here

Book Description
Moral issues and questions abound in daily life. Media outlets frequently raise awareness of many, such as those concerning individuals’ right to privacy. The same venues seldom, if ever, raise awareness of others, such as moral issues and questions concerning our fantasies. Regardless of the level of publicity various venues afford particular moral matters, most people who become aware of those matters find many interesting and important. A problem most encounter, however, is determining the criteria through which they should approach the moral matters they wish to engage. Ethicists have long sought a moral theory that would provide the desired criteria, but most will grant readily that those efforts have not produced a generally-accepted theory. This book presents the author’s case that a kind of moral liberalism is the theory we should use to engage daily life’s moral matters. The author presents a conception of moral liberalism, argues that it is the best approach to practical morality in a plural society, and applies it to several of morality’s practical matters.

Value and Justification

Value and Justification PDF Author: Gerald F. Gaus
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521397339
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
Rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of maximising personal values, nor derived from reason independent of them is this study's assertion. It contends that commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by value systems.Rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of maximising personal values, nor derived from reason independent of them is this study's assertion. It contends that commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by value systems.

Liberalism and the Moral Life

Liberalism and the Moral Life PDF Author: Nancy Lipton Rosenblum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Liberalism and the Moral Life presents the timely thoughts of twelve prominent scholars who are redrawing the map of liberalism... In essays that go beyond the conventional defense of liberalism based on moral skepticism or the possibility of discovering neutral principles, these writers consider possibilities for reinspiriting liberal thought. They offer fresh arguments for the moral status of individualism and argue that distinctively liberal virtues and practices sustain democracy, constituting a moral life that people share in common. Moving beyond theory, the authors point to a variety of institutional contexts within liberal democracy that provide moral education and opportunities for expressing commitment to substantive moral values.

Critical Moral Liberalism

Critical Moral Liberalism PDF Author: Jeffrey H. Reiman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847683147
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In this important book, Jeffrey Reiman responds to recent assaults on liberal theory by proposing a 'critical moral liberalism.' It is liberal in maintaining the emphasis of classical liberalism on individual freedom, moral in adhering to a distinctive vision of the good life rather than professing neutrality, and critical in taking seriously the objection-raised by feminists and Marxists, among others-that liberal theories often serve as ideological cover for oppression of one group by others. Critical moral liberalism has a conception of ideology, and resources for testing the suspicion that arrangements that look free are really oppressive. Reiman sets forth the basic arguments for the liberal moral obligation to maximize people's ability to govern their own lives, and for the conception of the good life that goes with this. He considers and answers objections to the liberal project, and defends liberal conceptions of privacy, moral virtue, economic justice, and Constitutional interpretation. Reiman then takes up specific policy issues, among them abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, moral education, capital punishment, and threats to privacy from modern information technology. Critical Moral Liberalism will be of interest to scholars and students of ethics, social and political philosophy, political theory, and public policy.

Liberalism and Its Discontents

Liberalism and Its Discontents PDF Author: Patrick Neal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349143626
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
In these essays the reigning models of liberal political theory of John Rawls and Joseph Raz are immanently criticized. Neal argues that neither 'political' nor 'perfectionist' liberalism adequately gives expression to the liberal spirit. Surprisingly, Neal finds resources for the expression of such a spirit in the much maligned tradition of Hobbesian, or 'vulgar', liberalism. He argues that a turn in this direction is necessary for the articulation of a liberalism more genuinely responsive to the diversity of modes of life in the twenty-first century.

The Morality of Everyday Life

The Morality of Everyday Life PDF Author: Thomas Fleming
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826262503
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Fleming offers an alternative to enlightened liberalism, where moral and political problems are looked at from an objective point of view and a decision made from a distant perspective that is both rational and universally applied to all comparable cases. He instead places importance on the particular, the local, and moral complexity, advocating a return to premodern traditions for a solution to ethical predicaments. In his view, liberalism and postmodernism ignore the fact that human beings by their very nature refuse to live in a world of abstractions where the attachments of friends, neighbors, family, and country make no difference. Fleming believes that a modern type of "casuistry" should be applied to moral conflicts, using examples from history, literature, and religion to explain this moral ecology that refuses to divorce organisms from their interactions with each other and with their environment.

The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy

The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy PDF Author: Michael J. Perry
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521115183
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This important new work elaborates and defends an account of the political morality of liberal democracy.

Public Philosophy

Public Philosophy PDF Author: Michael J. Sandel
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674744020
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
In this book, Michael Sandel takes up some of the hotly contested moral and political issues of our time, including affirmative action, assisted suicide, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, the meaning of toleration and civility, the gap between rich and poor, the role of markets, and the place of religion in public life. He argues that the most prominent ideals in our political life--individual rights and freedom of choice--do not by themselves provide an adequate ethic for a democratic society. Sandel calls for a politics that gives greater emphasis to citizenship, community, and civic virtue, and that grapples more directly with questions of the good life. Liberals often worry that inviting moral and religious argument into the public sphere runs the risk of intolerance and coercion. These essays respond to that concern by showing that substantive moral discourse is not at odds with progressive public purposes, and that a pluralist society need not shrink from engaging the moral and religious convictions that its citizens bring to public life.

From Promise to Contract

From Promise to Contract PDF Author: Dori Kimel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1847310761
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Liberal theory of contract is traditionally associated with the view according to which contract law can be explained simply as a mechanism for the enforcement of promises. The book bucks this trend by offering a theory of contract law based on a careful philosophical investigation of not only the similarities,but also the much-overlooked differences between contract and promise. Drawing on an analysis of a range of issues pertaining to the moral underpinnings of promissory and contractual obligations, the relationships in the context of which they typically feature, and the nature of the legal and moral institutions that support them, the book argues for the abandonment of the over-simplified notion that the law can systematically replicate existing moral or social institutions or simply enforce the rights or the obligations to which they give rise, without altering these institutions in the process and while leaving their intrinsic qualities intact. In its place the book offers an intriguing thesis concerning not only the relationship between contract and promise, but also the distinct functions and values that underlie contract law and explain contractual obligation. In turn, this thesis is shown to have an important bearing on theoretical and practical issues such as the choice of remedy for breach of contract, and broader concerns of political morality such as the appropriate scope of the freedom of contract and the role of the state in shaping and regulating contractual activity. The book's arguments on such issues, while rooted in distinctly liberal principles of political morality, often produce very different conclusions to those traditionally associated with liberal theory of contract, thus lending it a new lease of life in the face of its traditional as well as contemporary critiques.

Membership and Morals

Membership and Morals PDF Author: Nancy L. Rosenblum
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069118769X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
In recent years, membership has dropped in traditional voluntary associations such as Rotary Clubs, Jaycees, and bowling leagues. At the same time, concern is rising about the growth of paramilitary and hate groups. Scholars have warned that these trends are undermining civic society by creating a dangerous number of isolated, mistrustful individuals and organized, antisocial renegades. In this provocative book, however, Nancy Rosenblum takes a new, less narrowly political approach to the study of groups. And she reaches more optimistic conclusions about the state of civil society. Rosenblum argues that we should judge associations not only by what they do for civic virtue, but also by what they do for individual members. She shows that groups of all kinds--among them religious groups, corporations, homeowner associations, secret societies, racial and cultural identity groups, prayer groups, and even paramilitary groups--fill deep psychological and moral needs. And she contends that the failure to recognize this has contributed to an alarmist view of their social impact. For example, she argues that, although extremist groups have obvious antisocial aims, they constrain individuals who would be even more dangerous as maladjusted loners. And she examines the rapid growth of small "support groups"--which are usually dismissed as politically irrelevant--and shows that the moral support people find in such places as prayer groups and self-help groups helps to cultivate the social trust some scholars say is disappearing. Rosenblum concludes that, for practical and principled reasons, American democracy should permit expansive freedom of association, illustrating her case with discussion of specific cases in law. Rosenblum recognizes, however, that freedom has a price. She reminds us that some groups have oppressive and even criminal tendencies, and she explores what liberal democracy should do to ensure that individuals also have freedom within associations and freedom to exit. Throughout, Rosenblum writes eloquently and with a powerful moral voice, drawing on law, practical politics, and psychology to produce an original political theory of the moral uses of pluralism. The book adds remarkable depth and subtlety to one of the leading subjects in contemporary social and political debate.